Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third WorldExamining a series of El Nino-induced droughts and the famines that they spawned around the globe in the last third of the 19th century, Mike Davis discloses the intimate, baleful relationship between imperial arrogance and natural incident that combined to produce some of the worst tragedies in human history. Late Victorian Holocausts focuses on three zones of drought and subsequent famine- India, Northern China; and Northeastern Brazil. All were affected by the same global climatic factors that caused massive crop failures, and all experienced brutal famines that decimated local populations. But the effects of drought were magnified in each case because of singularly destructive policies promulgated by different ruling elites. Davis argues that the seeds of underdevelopment in what later became known as the Third World were sown in this era of High Imperialism, as the price for capitalist modernization was paid in the currency of millions of peasants' lives. |
Contents
Victorias Ghosts | 25 |
The Poor Eat Their Homes | 61 |
Gunboats and Messiahs | 91 |
El Niño and the New Imperialism 18881902 | 117 |
The Government of Hell | 119 |
Skeletons at the Feast | 141 |
Millenarian Revolutions | 177 |
Decyphering ENSO | 211 |
The Political Ecology of Famine | 277 |
The Origins of the Third World | 279 |
India The Modernization of Poverty | 311 |
China Mandates Revoked | 341 |
Brazil Race and Capital in the Nordeste | 377 |
Glossary | 395 |
Notes | 399 |
| 459 | |
Other editions - View all
Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World Mike Davis Limited preview - 2002 |
Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World Mike Davis Limited preview - 2017 |
Common terms and phrases
Africa agrarian agriculture Asia Asian Beijing Berar Bombay Boxer Brazil British Cambridge Canal capital catastrophe cattle Ceará Central Provinces Chinese Climate colonial cotton crisis crop cultivation Cunniff cycle death Deccan decline Delhi Digby disaster districts drought drought-famine economic El Niño ENSO epidemic Ethiopia European export Famine in India farmers flood global grain granaries Gujarat harvest Hebei Henan History hunger Ibid impact imperial increased India Indian Famine irrigation La Niña labor land late London Lytton Madras meanwhile million missionary modern monsoon Moreover mortality Niña nineteenth century Niño events Nordeste north China north China plain northern Ocean officials opium Pacific peasantry peasants percent poor population production Qing quoted rainfall rains region reported revenue rice rural season sertão Shandong Shanxi social South Southern Oscillation starvation starving subsistence Taiping teleconnection tion trade tropical variability Victorian villages warm weather western wheat Yangzi Yellow River
Popular passages
Page 3 - You see the stumps of the last season's crop. But with the exception of a few clusters of the castor bean and some weary, drooping date palms, the earth gives forth no fruit. A gust of sand blows over the plain and adds to the somberness of the scene.
Page 9 - Millions died, not outside the "modern world system," but in the very process of being forcibly incorporated into its economic and political structures. They died in the golden age of Liberal Capitalism; indeed, many were murdered, as we shall see, by the theological application of the sacred principles of Smith, Bentham and Mill.
Page 10 - The catastrophe of the native community is a direct result of the rapid and violent disruption of the basic institutions of the victim (whether force is used in the process or not does not seem altogether relevant]. These institutions are disrupted by the very fact that a market economy is...
Page 20 - Starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat.